William Sheppard, Cromwell's Law Reformer
William Sheppard, Cromwell's Law Reformer

Author: Nancy L. Matthews

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-07-08

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780521890915

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This study presents a full account of Sheppard's employment under Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate as well as an examination of his family background and education, his religious commitment to John Owen's party of Independents and his legal philosophy. An appraisal of all Sheppard's legal works, including those written during the Civil War and the Restoration period, illustrates the overlapping concerns with law reform, religion and politics in his generation. Sheppard had impressively consistent goals for the reform of English law and his prescient proposals anticipate the reforms ultimately adopted in the nineteenth century, culminating in the Judicature Acts of 1875-8. Dr Matthews examines the relative importance of Sheppard's books to his generation and to legal literature in general. The study provides a full bibliography of Sheppard's legal and religious works and an appendix of the sources Sheppard used in the composition of his books on the law.

Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State
Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

Author: Alan Harding

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 019821958X

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In this broad-ranging new study, Alan Harding challenges the orthodoxy that there was no state in the Middle Ages, arguing instead that it was precisely then that the concept acquired its force.

Villainage in England
Villainage in England

Author: Paul Vinogradoff

Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon

Published: 1892

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13:

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Vinogradoff, Sir Paul. Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1892. xii, 464 pp. Reprint available December, 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-477-0. Cloth. $95. * This classic study was highly regarded by Maitland and Holdsworth. An unsigned article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th. ed.) said it is "perhaps the most important book written on the peasantry of the feudal age and the village community in England; it can only be compared for value with F.W. Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond." (28:100). Vinogradoff [1854-1925] argues that the Norman-era villain was the direct descendent of the Anglo-Saxon freeman, so the typical Anglo-Saxon settlement was a free community rather than a manor. An impressive work of original scholarship and synthesis, it "shed a wholly new light on the social and legal aspects of the institution of villainage.": Holdsworth, The Historians of English Law 86.